CPI (Maoist)

Last month, quietly, unannounced, Arundhati
Roy decided to visit the forbidding and forbidden precincts of Central
India’s Dandakaranya Forests, home to a melange of tribespeople many of
whom have taken up arms to protect their people against state-backed
marauders and exploiters. She recorded in considerable detail the first
face-to-face journalistic “encounter” with armed guerillas, their
families and comrades, for which she combed the forests for weeks at
personal risk.

October 14, 2009 -- Sanhati is a collective of activists/academics who have been working in solidarity with peoples' movements in India by providing information and analysis (see http://www.sanhati.com).

We have been profoundly disturbed by the Indian government's reported plans to launch an unprecedented military offensive in the huge forested regions of central India, populated by millions of Indigenous tribes (adivasis), for stamping out an alleged Maoist insurgency. We feel that this will be a democratic and humanitarian disaster. Hence we have taken the initiative, in consultation with progressive intellectuals, to draft a statement of protest against the Indian government's military offensive and have circulated it among democratic and peace-loving citizens of India and the world for endorsement.

Below is the statement, the list of signatories (which includes many eminent intellectuals/academics) and a background note which puts the current conflict into perspective.

September 27, 2009 -- The following appeared as the
editorial in the July 2009 issue of Liberation,
the central organ of Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) – CPI (ML).
Since then, while the paramilitary campaign in Lalgarh has ended, repression
against the adivasi (tribal) people
of Lalgarh continues, with incidents of rape and violence reported. It must be
remembered that the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA) began
in Lalgarh after adivasi women were sexually assaulted by police during an
anti-Maoist raid; one woman was blinded. The state government of West Bengal [formed
by the pro-business Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front]
initiated an enquiry that established the assaults had taken place – but only
offered some monetary ``compensation’’ to some of the victims, refusing to meet
their demand of punishment for, and a public apology by, the police authorities
concerned.